The Manchester Society of Architects is proud to announce the launch of the MSA 160 Favourite Building – People’s Choice Vote, a key part of its year-long celebrations marking 160 years since the Society’s founding in 1865. Vote Now →
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2005 – 2025 Cultural Renaissance, High Rise Returns, Brexit, Covid 19, Grenfell and Northern Gateway
THE CIVIL JUSTICE CENTRE
Architect: Denton Corker Marshall
Completion Year: 2008
The yellow-draw filing cabinet, sliced vertically in three parts: offices, courts, and full height glass atrium, exciting and discreet at the same time.
2005 – 2025 Cultural Renaissance, High Rise Returns, Brexit, Covid 19, Grenfell and Northern Gateway
TIMEKEEPER’S SQUARE
Architect: Buttress
Completion Year: 2017
A step off Chapel Street, between a Gothic Revival cathedral and a Greek revival parish church, Timekeeper’s Square is a benchmark for low-rise residential development, that distinguishes Salford from its brash neighbour.
2005 – 2025 Cultural Renaissance, High Rise Returns, Brexit, Covid 19, Grenfell and Northern Gateway
BEETHAM TOWER
Architect: SimpsonHaugh
Completion Year: 2006
A sleek, unique outline that quickly became the globally recognised visual Icon of the city.
1985 – 2005 IRA, Regeneration, Globalisation and a bit of Post-Modernism
THE PUMP HOUSE
PEOPLE’S HISTORY MUSEUM
Architect: OMI
Completion Year: 1994
Few people now know what a Pump House was; a pumping station for converting roof-top stored water (from the river Irwell) into hydraulic power creating a vacuum that delivered packages through pipes in the immediate area of the city; water-powered drones.
1985 – 2005 IRA, Regeneration, Globalisation and a bit of Post-Modernism
HOMES FOR CHANGE, HULME
Architect: Mills Beaumont Leavey Channon
Completion Year: 1994
The housing cooperative in Hulme, funded by the Guinness Trust in collaboration with Manchester City Council and the government’s City Challenge, the large deck-access residential and mixed-use court development is the result of long-term public consultation and collaboration between designers and the community.
1985 – 2005 IRA, Regeneration, Globalisation and a bit of Post-Modernism
THE LOWRY
Architect: James Stirling and Michael Wilford
Completion Year: 2000
It arrived with the new millennium and is one of the UK’s more successful examples of culturally led regeneration, the architects wrapping a simple drawing of back-to-back theatres in a circulation of spaces and vistas as dramatic as the waterfront location.
1965 – 1985 EU, Economic Challenges, Things Can Only Get Better and the Rise of the Machines
NORTH TOWER
(FORMER HIGHLAND HOUSE)
Architect: Leach Rhodes Walker
Completion Year: 1966
The TV windows are the theme of the slender slab of system concrete panels, made easier on (some people’s) eye by the corporate purple coat of the hotel occupier.
1965 – 1985 EU, Economic Challenges, Things Can Only Get Better and the Rise of the Machines
55 KING STREET
Architect: Casson, Conder & Partners
Completion Year: 1969
A strong-box of a building by Sir Hugh Casson for District Bank, dressed in hand-tooled vertically ribbed bouncer-black Swedish granite, not to be messed with.
1965 – 1985 EU, Economic Challenges, Things Can Only Get Better and the Rise of the Machines
ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE
Architect: Levitt Bernstein
Completion Year: 1976
A seven-sided steel and glass pod enclosing an 800-seat auditorium on 3 levels, no member of the audience being further that ten metres from centre stage; unique, thrilling, as startlingly modern today as it was on opening night in 1976.
1945 – 1965 Post-War Reconstruction, Slum clearance, Queen Elizabeth II and Swinging 60s
GRANADA HOUSE
Architect: Ralph Tubbs
Completion Year: 1962
Sidney Bernstein, a cinema owner from Essex chose Manchester for his move into television, chose Ralph Tubbs, architect of the Festival of Britain’s Dome of Discovery to design his Quay Street HQ, and built what is arguably the most significant post war cultural building in the city.
1945 – 1965 Post-War Reconstruction, Slum clearance, Queen Elizabeth II and Swinging 60s
CIS TOWER & NEW CENTURY HOUSE
Architect: Gordon Tait and G. S. Hay
Completion Year: 1962
The Co Op Campus, branded NOMA, has undergone major adaptation and reuse over the last decade and the trio of Chicago-inspired curtain-wall towers, pavilion and podium are as good as the International Style gets in the UK.
1945 – 1965 Post-War Reconstruction, Slum clearance, Queen Elizabeth II and Swinging 60s
PETER HOUSE
Architect: Ansell and Bailey
Completion Year: 1958
Curvy, canopied, clad in Portland stone; not the only building facing St Peter’s Square to style these characteristics, Peter House partners Central Library in subtle ways.
1925 – 1945 Industrial Diversification, Great Depression, WW2 and Women’s Suffrage
DAILY EXPRESS MANCHESTER
Architect: Sir Owen Williams
Completion Year: 1939
The black glass building – a skin of opaque glass and vitrolite – landed on Great Ancoats Street as war broke out across Europe, like an invader from another galaxy.
1925 – 1945 Industrial Diversification, Great Depression, WW2 and Women’s Suffrage
CENTRAL LIBRARY AND TOWN HALL EXTENSION
Architect: E Vincent Harris
Completion Year: 1938
E Vincent Harris won the competition to design a building for council offices, reference library and theatre, by separating out the functions into two buildings dissected by a walkway, resulting in a startling assembly of geometries unique to this site.
1925 – 1945 Industrial Diversification, Great Depression, WW2 and Women’s Suffrage
SUNLIGHT HOUSE
Architect: Joseph Sunlight
Completion Year: 1932
Manchester’s first skyscraper, Chicago-inspired, designed and built by self-taught architect developer Joseph Zchovsky, who came to Manchester from Belorussia, changed his name to Sunlight, and made a great leap upwards (to fourteen storeys).
1905 – 1925 Trams, Trafford Park and WW1
BRIDGEWATER HOUSE
Architect: Harry S. Fairhurst
Completion Year: 1912
Revolutionary shipping warehouse for the motor vehicle age.
1905 – 1925 Trams, Trafford Park and WW1
ALBERT HALL
Architect: William James Morley
Completion Year: 1908
Built for Wesleyan Methodists by a Bradford architect, clad in Burmantofts terracotta from Leeds, arguably the best rock-and-roll venue in town, which is not quite what the Methodists had in mind.
1905 – 1925 Trams, Trafford Park and WW1
100 KING STREET
Architect: Sir Edwin Lutyens
Completion Year: 1935
The architect of New Delhi brought a geometric puzzle-box clad in white Portland Stone to the Manchester grime.
1885 – 1905 Manchester Ship Canal, Urban Expansion and Electricity
FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST SCIENTIST
Architect: Edgar Wood
Completion Year: 1904
Currently marketed as Daisy Bank Manor, should you wish to celebrate your wedding in Grade I listed church designed by Edgar Wood, the first Christian Science Church outside the USA.
1885 – 1905 Manchester Ship Canal, Urban Expansion and Electricity
VICTORIA SQUARE ANCOATS’
Architect: Henry Spalding and A.W.Cross
Completion Year: 1889
Original Modern City housing, the oldest extant municipal scheme in the UK, still housing residents in the original five-storey deck-access square.
1885 – 1905 Manchester Ship Canal, Urban Expansion and Electricity
JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY
Architect: Basil Champneys
Completion Year: 1890
Enriqueta Rylands’ neo-Gothic memorial to husband John Rylands, Manchester’s first multi-millionaire.
1865 – 1885 The Years of Industrial Expansion
MANCHESTER TOWN HALL
Architect: Alfred Waterhouse
Completion Year: 1877
We are promised our Town Hall back, restored, refreshed and resplendent in 2026.
1865 – 1885 The Years of Industrial Expansion
JOHN OWENS BUILDING - UoM
Architect: Alfred Waterhouse
Completion Year: 1873
Impossible to overstate the importance of the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the whole Higher Education sector to the city, and the John Owens Building is its foundation.
1865 – 1885 The Years of Industrial Expansion
MEMORIAL HALL
Architect: Thomas Worthington
Completion Year: 1866
Venetian Gothic palazzo across piazza Albert Square.
For more than a century and a half, architects across eight generations have helped shape Manchester’s built environment, leaving a legacy of significant and inspiring buildings. To celebrate this milestone, the MSA has curated a shortlist of 24 outstanding projects that represent the breadth and brilliance of the city’s architectural heritage.
The People’s Choice Vote invites the public, architectural professionals, and the wider community to select their favourite building from this unique collection.
Votes can be cast online via the voting form at the bottom of this page, with the winner to be announced at the Manchester Society of Architects Annual Dinner on Thursday 6th November 2025.
Speaking about the initiative, [Jenny Etheridge. MSA President] said:
“This vote is an opportunity to celebrate 160 years of architectural excellence and to recognise the buildings that continue to inspire, define, and represent Manchester. We look forward to seeing which project is chosen as the people’s favourite.”
Voting Form
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